John Mbiti


John Samuel Mbiti was a Kenyan-born Christian philosopher and writer. He was an ordained Anglican priest, and a canon.

Early life

John Mbiti was born on 30 November 1931 in Mulago, Kitui County, eastern Kenya. Child of two farmers, Samuel Mutuvi Ngaangi and Valesi Mbandi Kiimba, he is one of six children and was raised in a strong Christian environment. His Christian upbringing encouraged his educational journey through the African Inland Church. He attended Alliance High School in Nairobi and continued his education at University College of Makerere, he then furthered his education at the University of London where he graduated in 1953. Mbiti received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1956 and a Bachelor of Theology degree in 1957 from Barrington College, a Christian liberal arts school in Rhode Island. He then earned his Doctor of Philosophy in theology at the University of Cambridge, from where he graduated in 1963.

Biography

Born in Mulango, Kitui County, in British Kenya on 30 November 1931, Mbiti studied in Uganda and the United States before taking his doctorate in 1963 at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. He taught religion and theology in Makerere University, Uganda, from 1964 to 1974 and was subsequently director of the World Council of Churches' Ecumenical Institute in Bogis-Bossey, Switzerland. He held visiting professorships at universities across the world and published extensively on philosophy, theology and African oral traditions.
Mbiti's seminal book, African Religions and Philosophy, was the first work to challenge Christian assumption that traditional African religious ideas were "demonic and anti-Christian".
His sympathetic treatment of traditional religions was based on massive field work. Mbiti was clear that his interpretation of these religions was from a firmly Christian perspective, and this aspect of his work was sometimes severely criticized.
Mbiti's research interests included theology in Africa and Asia, and ecumenism. He also collaborated on a book of African proverbs, collected from across the continent.
From 2005 up until his death in 2019, Mbiti was an emeritus professor at the University of Bern and parish minister to the town of Burgdorf, Switzerland. He was married to Verena Mbiti-Siegenthaler and had four children. Mbiti died in Burgdorf on 6 October 2019.

Religious work

After graduating from Cambridge University he was ordained an Anglican priest of the Church of England. He served as a parish priest in England until he returned to Makerere in 1964 to teach traditional African religions. In the 1980s Mbiti left teaching to become a parish minister in Bergdorf, Switzerland, for 15 years.

Academic work

Mbiti returned to Makerere University, where he taught African traditional religion from 1964 to 1974. While he was here he wrote his first book, African Religions and Philosophy. His primary focus in his first book was to challenge the widely held views that African traditional religions were rooted in demonic anti-Christian values and to stress that traditional African religions deserve the same respect as Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism. He based his claim on his knowledge that in the Bible, God is the creator of all things, therefore meaning that God has revealed himself to all things. Mbiti had little knowledge of African Traditional religion, as he was unaware of previous lectures regarding its foundations due to the deep oral traditions of such religions. He sought out his own personal research to teach the class. He gathered ideas from over 300 African peoples or tribes while conducting field research. Being asked by his students for a collection of his research propelled him to compile his notes and lectures into his first book, which was published in 1969. Following his career at Makerere, he held visiting professorships at universities across the world where he continued publishing books on philosophy, theology and African oral traditions.
From 1974 to 1980 Mbiti was the director of the World Council of Churches Bossey Ecumenical Institute. He held a series of influential conferences that focused on intercultural theology. His goal was to bring together African, Asian and other theologians for ecumenical encounter and dialogue. The first conference in June 1976 focused on African and Asian contributions to contemporary theology. This conference had an attendance of more than 80 participants. His second more well-known conference, "Confessing Christ in Different Cultures", was held in Bossey in July 1977. This conference held an attendance of more than 100 people who gathered from 35 different countries. There were discussions on how an individual could reach from a contextual to a universal confession of Christ and emphasized how confession can find expression in liturgy and worship. His third conference focused on "Indigenous Theology and the Universal Church".
Mbiti was also the first person to translate the Bible into Kiikamba, his people's dialect.
In 2016, he was honoured with the Archbishop's Award for Peace and Justice from the Anglican Church of Southern Africa.
At the time of his death, Mbiti was an emeritus professor of the University of Bern and retired parish minister in Bergdorf, Switzerland.

Findings in African traditional religion

Mbiti in his book looks to dissect the origins of African traditional religion, in specific by studying oral traditions. The Igbo religion is one of the traditional African religions that Mbiti researched, their tradition was rooted in their culture. Received orally by authorities, this tradition was transmitted from generation to generation through the same oral process. Their traditions revolve around a highly ontological phenomena, pushing their followers to question their existence and being. Within their traditional life, individuals immersed themselves with religious participation, in which they believe starts before they are born and continues after their death. The Igbo religious life is connected to their ancestors and to those not yet born creating a mystic continuum. The Igbo religion fully embodies all characteristics of a traditional world religion, including its beliefs, sacred myths, oral qualities, strong appeal to the hearts of its followers, a high degree of ritualization, and possession of numerous participatory parsonages such as officiating elders, kings, priests and diviners.
The Igbo religion differs from nontraditional proselytizing religions because it does not have elders who carry out missionary work and individuals who do not preach their religion onto others. They believe in a supreme being who is believed to be the controller of the world and all its inhabitants.
Mbiti also found that when an individual dies, his soul or spirit wanders until the body is given a proper burial. This waiting period is called the transitional period of the deceased. Christianity arrived in Igbo land in 1857, conjuring fear within the Igbo that if they became Christians their god would bring disaster to them. Others also refused to convert to Christianity because of the belief that Christian missionaries were there to destroy the Igbo religion. Christians attacked the traditional song music and dance of the Igbo religion as they deemed it immoral. This set the stage for religious conflict between the Igbo and the Christians, which might have led to the inference that African traditional religions were rooted in anti-Christian belief. Elders were merely protecting their traditions. One of Mbiti's most famous quotes in his book African Religions and Philosophy was:
"Wherever the African is, there is religion."

Criticisms

Mbiti faced criticism from the Ugandan writer Okot p'Bitek for casting his arguments in intellectual terms that had been established by the west. In specific, his biggest criticism was that African cosmologies ultimately align with Christian views of God as omnipotent, omnipresent and eternal. P’Bitek wrote in his own book African Religions in Western Scholarship that the African traditional religions are beyond recognition to the ordinary Africans in the countryside. Mbiti supposedly never responded to the criticism, according to Derek Peterson, a professor of history and African studies at the University of Michigan.

Works